Saturday 28 October 2017.

They couldn't have measured much over five foot apiece. The dutiful daughter with clear skin and haunted eyes holding the unsteady hands of her mother, well into her seventies.
Stopping every few yards to allow the older woman to catch her breath. They didn't talk, they didn't smile.
The mother sat down a couple of chairs down and swatted feebly at her hair as if to brush the nuisance sunlight away. She indicated to her daughter who knelt on the footpath to rub her mother's calf.
Presently the mother rose and they continued their promenade.
A tall woman in her late 50s ordered a pot of tea further down. Her sunglasses dark so I had no way to determine where or upon whom she was casting her calm gaze.
The young waitress helped me make up my mind because the nuisance sunlight kept driving any clear thoughts out of my head.
A tall man with a cane, his left foot twisted inwards, ushered his large family into the cafe as a couple sat at the table next to mine.
This couple looked handsome, in spite of her lime green coat, in spite of his ornate Tyrolean hat with its ridiculous feather.
A cappuccino for me and ummm. She points to a cake in the window. All of this to the waitress.
The old man gently waves his hand. He's alright, thanks.
I told you, I come here often, Alex. I was here the other day. No, Monday. No. What day is it?
I don't know either in this moment, in this sunshine.
Her sunglasses are enormous and hair is jet black and she looks confident, as does he with the tufts of white hair screaming out from beneath the hat.
I'm not sure what else they have to do with the house but it's looking good, you must admit. I'm starting to feel better about it all.
The waitress brings out a flan, all custard and gelatine and colourful fruit, and coffee.
I realise I'm smiling and I don't know why.
The woman has fast reflexes. Her hand darts out and grabs the waitress's hand.
We're all slightly alarmed, I realise.
These. Such lovely nails.
The young waitress: Are you Italian? It's just that I'm Italian and that's the first thing we say every single time.
Can you tell me how you do these?
They last for about six weeks and then you can peel them off.
What are you laughing at?
This last to me.
I'm not.
I am,
I stammer.
I'm laughing at this -
This very special, very ordinary moment.
The old woman laughs.
The best kinds of moments, she says.
How could I even try to make them understand that I was drunk from it all before the nuisance sun went away again.


This perfect day.

Is the water rising or am I sinking?

There was a man with his kombi and this was in another lifetime,
as with every other laboured and tedious imagining of mine.
The man appeared kind as he stopped and gave me a lift in a snow-littered place called Enfield in a country called England
and I thanked him as I hopped in without paying too much attention to his face (which could have been any face in any country) or anything else about him in the pre-dawn darkness because I was tired and I couldn't sleep in the bus shelter because it let the sleet through and I was hungry but I had tobacco.
As we set off towards Chelmsford, I asked if he minded if I smoked because like everyone back then, we all had to smoke in cars because it was law. Or should have been, according to anyone who smoked and he said no, so I started to roll up, thinking he meant what he didn't mean at all.
And the next no had all the exclamation of a sharp razor blade.
I mumbled an apology because I was tired and so on and so forth as he said, "The tobacco industry is one of the many hands of world Jewry."
And I nodded lamely because a) he was hissing into my deaf ear and, b) I was etc. etc. etc.
"Did you hear what I said?"
"No, sorry. So I can't smoke?"
"I told you you can't. It's the Rothschilds. The bastards are behind it all. American money. How else do you account for Israel?!"
I was about to respond that I couldn't account for myself 6 hours ago let alone a country a thousand miles away that I knew nothing about.
But it was his kombi and I was stupid for warmth and sleetlessness.
He leaned across and flung open the glovebox and this, to be completely honest, scared the shit out of me.
Guns flashed through my mind.
Knives.
Scissors.
Anything that involved my blood or my lost and lifeless corpse.
But it was a tightly bunched clump of folded A4 sheets with what appeared to be badly mimeoed text and pictures.
All of it a trash testimony to antisemitism courtesy of this cockney kombi driver and his desert-headed, cousin-fucking cohorts kicking heads and soup tins back around the estates.
He was smashing sheet after sheet into my chest as I tried to make sure I lost none of the tobacco that I was still trying to push back into my pouch.
Our time'll come and we'll kill and blah blah fucking blah.
Hate, you say? You, you dumb cunt, you don't know what hate means!
Kike this and Jew that and
god
knows
what
else.
That glovebox appeared to be a bottomless pit of tacky pamphlets and his NHS mouth seemed to be an endless spewhole of bone-headed vitriol.
So we settled into a routine - him spouting to his well and truly captive audience and me internalising my newfound mantra of, "Who poisoned you?! Who poisoned you?! Who poisoned you?!"
with the occasional interjection of, "This is my stop up ahead," and "That was my stop back there".
And, "I'LL LET YOU OUT WHEN I'M FUCKING READY!"
And the flat countryside rolled past and this would be my last day on earth and his ugly face would be the last human thing I ever saw and
suddenly he stopped.
Nowhere. Ploughed, sodden fields. No houses.
Just
nowhere.
___

"Get out."
I did. I seemed to have heard him just fine first time around on this final occasion.
He didn't even lean across to shut the door. He just took off trusting impetus to do the job.
And the last thing I saw were the stickers on the tailgate.
I'm a boy scout leader.
St George.
Proud to be English
Ah well, you know this story already. I've told it to you in a million not so subtle variations.
...
But it all brings me to today and the comments on the news reports as the biggest mass shooting in America unfolds for the entire horrified world to see.
Murderous fools wrapped in their unshaken, despotic convictions defending and playing apologist for other murderous fools and we - the normal and the broken alike - go on holding our breath and waiting.
For nothing to happen once again.
With every beat of my fear-filled heart, I wish it weren't so
but the mantra in my head hasn't changed a solitary syllable.

Weeping.